Well, well, well... I finally learned what the "ancient Chinese secret" is... it's that the Buddha's get very jealous! I think the Giant Buddha was mad because I was going to see another Buddha and so he made the weather cold and snowy and tried to stop me from getting to Shangri-la! Of course I have another travel story... so for my bus trip to Shangri-la from Lijiang, I have my hostel both book my bus ticket and schedule a taxi to pick me up. So the taxi arrives at 7:15 AM and I guess both the driver and the hostel folks are half asleep since the taxi took me to the wrong bus station! I didn't know it when I got there so i showed my bus ticket to the ticket lady and she just shakes her head and sort of shoos me away. Of course no one speaks English so I keep asking people and showing them my ticket and they keep shaking their heads. At this time it's about 7:45 and my bus leaves at 8:10 and I'm starting to panic a bit. So i call the hostel and tell them what's happening and they ask me to hand the phone to the ticket lady so after about 5 minute of them sort of yelling back and forth, the lady hands me the phone back and the person from the hostel says I'm at the wrong bus station and to try to hail a cab since it would take to long to send another one. I was a little ticked but at this point, it's 7:55. So i hail a cab (luckily, the bus ticket lady wrote in Chinese on my bus ticket to take me to the other bus station). So i think this taxi driver knows I'm running late because he flies to the other station and we pull up right about 8:10. Luckily the bus is running a hair late so i run thru the bus station, show my ticket to the lady and they whisk me on to the bus right before it,s ready to pull out. Whew.... the Giant Buddha tried to fool me, but I foiled him! But then when I get to Shangri-la it's snowing! It was actually kind of cool since it wasn't really sticking and wasn't too cold. I got settled into my hostel and asked how i could get to the large Tibetan monastery, which is the largest one outside of Tibet, and they said just take the local bus until it gets to the last stop. Well this bus was a hoot. People getting on with their dogs and everything. Very interesting. But the monastery was really neat and set in this beautiful mountainside. Shangri-la itself is very much like Lijiang with its ancient city protected from car traffic and lots of little shops and restaurants along these cobble stoned streets. It's just colder and at a higher elevation. It sits at roughly 10,000 feet (about twice as high as Denver) and if the weather is nice tomorrow, I might try pushing my altitude capacity and head up to about 14,000 feet to one of their national parks. Well, that's all for now. I hope everyone is having a good weekend and i'll just leave you with GO STEELERS and GO PANTHERS!!!!!!! Jeff
The Wandering Italian 